Friday, 14 August 2009

In a rec.games.roguelike.development thread started in reaction to the permadeath article I wrote, Ray suggests:

I think a grindless roguelike will occasionally murder yourcharacters for no good reason, due to the analysis I outlinedabove. And I think I *am* prepared to fully explore theimplications of that conclusion. What do you think a grindlessroguelike looks like?

You'll probably want to read the rest of the thread - there's a lot of insightful points made by a number of rgrd regulars.

That was a great article. I'm developing my own roguelike with a friend and we're trying to implement an absolute zero-grinding framework. So far this has led us to no natural monster regeneration and no natural HP regeneration (among other decisions). Once the game is fleshed out, it will be interesting to see (assuming it is in fact ungrindable) whether these choices actually make for an enjoyable game.